Carolyn Porco: Use Big Robots — and Big Rockets

Portrait: Mario Hugo

She has been criticizing the space program's shuttle-centric approach for years, and now the agency is finally listening to her. Carolyn Porco, 55, leads the imaging team of the Cassini mission to Saturn — which has sent back thousands of snapshots — a project that she says could have been done more quickly and cheaply had it been launched with the kind of big rockets the US quit building after the moon program. Here are the talking points she would bring if she were granted an audience with the president.

Porco's talking points for the president

Space shuttle program will be retired in 2010. Hooray!

·Waste of an estimated $170 billion. Instead of circling Earth, we should be exploring outward.
·Ares V rocket (being developed) can carry more than six times the weight the space shuttle can — meaning more equipment and better results.
· More launch capacity also means ability to travel huge distances more quickly.

Send robots.

· Robots will always have to go before humans — don't need to eat, breathe, or be kept safe. Plus, never have to come back.
· Also cheap. Cassini's cost: about $3.3 billion. Getting to the moon: An estimated $135 billion.
· True, robots are heavy, but Ares is powerful enough to get them to Saturn and beyond with relative ease.

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Still, need to send humans, too.

· End robots-versus-people debate — let both sides win.
· NASA aims to return people to the moon and build a research outpost there as base for future exploration. Good.
· Sending people is more dangerous and expensive, but putting someone on Mars shows that we have higher ideas and ideals. US can be inspirational again.